Hebrews 6:7-8

Hebrews 6:7-8. Awful as this teaching is, men accept it in the sphere of nature and recognise the equity of the arrangement.

For land (not the earth) that bath drank in (not that drinketh in: the showers precede the fruitfulness) the rain that cometh oft upon it (that keeps coming, not in drenching but frequent showers, and comes for the purpose of making it fruitful, probably the force of the genitive with ἰπὶ) So the land is described; it is not impenetrable rock from which the rain runs off, but land that sucks in the rain. Rain itself is in Scripture the emblem both of Divine truth (Isaiah 55:10) and of Divine influence (Isaiah 44:3). The whole description, therefore, applies to those who have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come.... And, the result is in one case that the mother earth made fruitful from above, brings forth herbage (edible plants, grass, corn, food) fit for those on whose account, moreover (not ‘by whom,' as Vulgate, Luther, Calvin, and others, a sense the Greek will not admit), it is tilled (carefully cultivated, a strong word); such fertility making a due return for the rain of heaven and the toil of man, partakes of blessing from God, in that He rewards it according to His own law (Matthew 13:12) and promise (John 15:2) with more abundant returns.

Hebrews 6:8. But when it (or the first clause may be repeated: ‘but when the same kind of land under like conditions') bears (produces, not so noble a word as ‘brings forth,' which expresses something like natural birth) thorns and thistles (so generally, Matthew 7:16, etc.) these products of the curse it is rejected (being tried, it is proved worthless and reprobate, a word occurring seven times in N. T., and only in Paul's Epistles), and is nigh unto a curse; whose end (not the end of the curse, De Wette, Bleek, etc., but the end of the land; see Psalms 109:13, Heb., his end shall be) is for (or unto) burning. With great tenderness the writer softens the language of the original curse (Genesis 3:17-18), and pronounces land of this kind to be nigh unto cursing, in great danger of it, and the end to be in the direction of burning an end it may reach and will reach unless there be a great change. What this burning is has been much discussed. Are they the weeds, that the soil may be made fruitful, as were the weeds of old (Virg. Geor. i. 84-93)? No; the weeds and soil also. What is burnt is the soil, and that means destruction; so it is in Deuteronomy 29:22-23, and elsewhere; comp. John 15:16.... Each clause of this analogy answers to the description already given in the previous verses. The tillers of the soil are Christian workers; they for whom the ground is tilled are the Father (1 Corinthians 3:9), and the Son as heir (chap. Hebrews 3:6; Matthew 21:38). The rain represents the oft-repeated manifestations of truth and grace, and the drinking in of the rain symbolizes the apprehension and the reception of them; if there be fruitfulness there will be ever-increasing blessing; and if there be no fruitfulness, the case may not be hopeless; but it is nearing that state, and is preparing for judgment, and the judgment is destruction. How applicable all this description is to our own age, as to every age, need not be shown.